CFP: Book Ornament and Luxury Critique, University of Zurich, Deadline: 15th April 2022

The research group “Textures of Sacred Scripture. Materials and Semantics of Sacred Book Ornament” (https://textures-of-scripture.ch) invites paper proposals for a three-day international conference on “Book Ornament and Luxury Critique”. The conference, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is scheduled to take place at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich from 15 to 17 September 2022. 

In his famous preface to Job, Jerome severely criticizes sumptuous luxury in the ornamentation of books: “Let those who will keep the old books with their gold and silver letters on purple skins (…) if only they will leave for me and mine, our poor pages and copies which are less remarkable for beauty than for accuracy” (Praefatio in librum Hiob, ed. Schaff/Wace 1890, 492). While this source is often cited as proof of the availability of luxurious copies of sacred scriptures in Late Antiquity, and the continuation of such splendor – despite clerical opposition – throughout the Middle Ages, the tradition of luxury critique it documents, and its further development, has received far less attention. When, how, and under what circumstances might book ornament be understood as offensive, and which strategies were employed to avoid such critique or to create books that are ostentatiously ascetic? 

Since antiquity, philological correctness was opposed to ornament in the rhetorical discourse, which associated an overtly rich language with overblown luxury and female adornment. Already in Roman literature, this gendered discourse was projected onto the material artifacts of writing, a tradition that influenced the varied discussions about the materiality of sacred books and their status in Christian, Islamic and Jewish book cultures from Late Antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond. In all three religious traditions, the discourse concerning the ornamentation of scripture established connections “between ornamenting bodies, buildings and language, in which fancy forms are rejected in favor of plain, and embellishment opposed to simplicity in a dialect of truth and falsity” (F. B. Flood, in: Clothing Sacred Scriptures, ed. D. Ganz/B. Schellewald, Berlin/Boston 2019, 52). 

The conference welcomes proposals that consider the entire range of such critique of book ornament in Christian, Islamic and Jewish book cultures, and that analyze their specific contexts and semantics, as well as “the spaces of negotiation, in which artists, commissioners and users could react to critical allegations without simply obeying them” (D. Ganz, as above, 34). The time range for proposed papers is from antiquity through the Middle Ages and beyond; early modern and Reformation studies as well as broader theoretical approaches are also welcome. Discussions across disciplinary boundaries are encouraged. Topics of particular interest are:

– material semantics of luxury and its opposites (especially the role of color, layout and format)
– critique of gilded script and the clothing of scriptures in gold, jewelry and textiles
– self-commenting books (e. g. Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon) and self-legitimation of ornament
– the ornament critique of the monastic orders
– the economics of luxury and its critique
– the rhetoric of luxury critique 
– luxury critique and gender discourses
– luxury critique in an interreligious perspective

Speaking time for each paper should not exceed 30 minutes and will be followed by a discussion. The conference languages are English, German, French and Italian. Submissions should include the title and an abstract (max. 300 words) as well as the name, contact information and a short CV of the speaker. Proposals should be submitted to thomas.rainer@uzh.ch by 15 April 2022. Acceptance of papers will be confirmed at the beginning of May 2022. The conference is currently planned as an in-person meeting. Travel expenses and on-site accommodation of all speakers will be covered.

For more information, please click here.

Image: Monochrome initial in the “Grande Bible de Clairvaux”, Troyes, Bibl. mun., ms. 27, t. II, f. 99v. showing the ascetic ornament of sacred scriptures in the milieu of Cistercian monasteries in the mid-12th century. 

Online Conference: Opening the Sacred Text-Meaning, Materiality and Historiography, Zoom, 21st-23rd February

We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for “Opening the Sacred Text: Meaning, Materiality, Historiography”. Bringing together scholars from around the world, we will explore the decorative frontispieces and so-called carpet pages that are a remarkable feature of manuscripts from diverse cultures, including Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

The conference will be online, via Zoom, and we’ll send out a Zoom link to registered participants nearer the time.

The conference will run over three days (Monday 21 February 2022 – Wednesday 23 February 2022), with a 2pm GMT start each day. We hope that the timing and the online format will make the conference accessible to as many people as possible.

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Stewart J. Brookes: “Carpet Pages: What?”
  • Christine Bachman: “Holistic Visions: Connecting Book Covers and Ornamental Pages in Early Medieval Manuscripts”
  • William Endres, “An Insular Meditative Sequence: Sorting Out the Evolving Complexity of Interplay among Cross-Carpet and Other Decorative Pages as Preparation for Entering a Gospel”
  • Carol Farr, “Unravelling the Insular Carpet Page: Needs and Responses in Book Art”   
  • Elina Gertsman, “Untethered Image”
  • Jacopo Gnisci, “Woven Prayers: Carpet Pages in Ethiopian Manuscripts”   
  • Dalia-Ruth Halperin, “Reciprocal Ties Between the Calligraphic Frames in Sefardi Bibles and the Text and Images in their Micrography Carpets: Variant Regional Emphasis”
  • Julie Harris, “The Sense of an Ending: Finispieces in the Iberian Bible Codices”
  • Eva Hoffman, “The “Carpet Page”: A Space of Exchange Between Religion and Culture”
  • Cailah Jackson, “Opening the Islamic Book in Medieval Konya: Illuminated Pointed Ovals and Their Possible Sources”
  • Elvira Martín-Contreras, “Decorative and Textual: Carpet Pages in the Earliest Hebrew Bible Codices”
  • Bernard Meehan, “Roman Mosaics, Early Christian Architecture and the Books of Durrow and Kells”
  • Georgi Parpulov, “‘The Frontispiece Miniatures of the Oldest Arabic Gospel Book”
  • Anastasija Ropa, “Ornamental Frontispieces in Slavic Orthodox Gospels”
  • Rose Walker, “Opening Iberian Sacred Books from the Tenth to the Early Thirteenth Centuries”
  • Laura McCloskey Wolfe, “Mimesis and Metamorphosis in Irish Manuscript Illumination:  A Comparative Analysis of Metalwork Techniques and Textual Decoration in the Book of Durrow”  

Register for this conference here.

Online Lecture: Materiality and Anachronism in the Medieval Church, Dr Karl Kinsella, Zoom, 4th April 2022, 18:00-19:30 BST

The past looks very much like the present to medieval audiences, filled with recognisable buildings, objects and the things of everyday life. This chronological mash-up has little to do with medieval ignorance of the past; instead, it expresses a flexible approach to authenticity and the very real material links between past and present within objects. Over a decade ago Christopher S. Wood and Alexander Nagel proposed a theory of the anachronic, where copies of historical objects retained an inner authenticity in the eyes of contemporary viewers. 

This talk pushes that theory further back into the central Middle Ages by framing it within Latin theories of the world and its inner nature. Medieval church architecture provides an excellent framework to understand this relationship between the material reality of the building and its allegorical links to history. But this relationship is not easily defined and is frequently contradictory. In contemporary texts, the altar, for example, is Christ, but it is also Jerusalem, Goliath and any number of other people, objects, and places in the Christian bible. How can something be both something in front of a medieval churchgoer and also something from history, and how is that seeming contradiction resolved within a contemporary understanding of materiality? This talk will address those questions and allow people to see the church and its embedded significance in a new light.

This seminar will last approximately 60 minutes including a Q&A, and will begin at 6pm GMT on Monday 4th April 2022. The Zoom link for this session will be emailed to you as part of your confirmation of registration (please check your spam/junk folder for this email if you cannot find it). This seminar is part of the Ideology, Society, and Medieval Religion: Impositions and Negotiations series – for more info, see here or email Tim Wingard (tim.wingard@york.ac.uk) or Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow (erpg500@york.ac.uk).

Karl Kinsella is lecturer of medieval art history at the University of Aberdeen. After completing his DPhil in Oxford, he lectured at the University of York for two years before taking up the post of Shuffrey Junior Research Fellow in Architectural History 2018. His work on twelfth-century architectural drawing received the Hawksmoor Medal in architectural history and his book on the subject will be published by MIT Press in February 2023. His new project examines late medieval theories of architecture in northern Europe.

Register for this event here.

Online Lecture: Giovanni de Fondulis – A Forgotten Protagonist of North Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Courtauld Institute via Zoom, 28th February 5:00-6:30 GMT

Speaker: Marco Scansani – Research Fellow, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

When we think of terracotta sculpture from northern Italy, the first works that come to mind are the impressive Paduan Lamentation groups, especially the masterpieces of Guido Mazzoni and Niccolò dell’Arca. The name of Giovanni de Fondulis is certainly not among the most well-known, neither among specialists, nor among the general public. After all, his name was only rediscovered in 2006 and his artistic personality was not outlined until an exhibition two years ago. Yet he was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the major sculptors active in Lombardy and the Veneto. His role is comparable to that of the better-known Pietro Lombardo, Bartolomeo Bellano and Antonio Rizzo. This lecture will offer a reconstruction of the cultural context in which he operated, pieced together from documents and from his surviving works (whether in churches or dispersed through European and American collections), as well as from records of his lost works. It will consider the relationships, artistic development and the biography of an artist who was able to conjure together the eccentric, foliate styles of late gothic Lombardy with the pleasing inventions that Donatello brought to Padua, as he carried Paduan terracotta sculpture towards the novelties of the sixteenth century.  

Marco Scansani is a Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa on a project dedicated to cataloguing the Renaissance bronzetti in the Museo del Bargello in Florence.  He took his Master’s degree from the University of Bologna with a thesis on the sculptor and medallist Sperandio Savelli and was subsequently awarded his doctorate at the Scuola Normale in Pisa with a project on the sculptor Giovanni de Fondulis. His research interests are primarily focussed on the history of Renaissance sculpture in northern Italy, in relation to which he has published various articles and book chapters, as well as made several contributions to exhibitions and conferences. 

Organised by Dr Scott Nethersole (The Courtauld) and Dr Guido Rebecchini (The Courtauld).

To register, click here.

Online Lecture: Elizabeth and Mary – Curators Talk, British Library via Zoom, 16th February 2022, 19:30-20:30 GMT

This is an online event hosted on Zoom. Bookers are sent a link in advance giving access.

Take a look behind the scenes with the British Library curators of Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, as they talk about the process of putting together this extraordinary exhibition.

Join Andrea Clarke and Karen Limper-Herz to find out how they selected some of the Library’s most exceptional 16th-century manuscripts and printed works to bring the dramatic story of the queens to life.

Andrea Clarke is Lead Curator of Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library. She co-curated the Library’s exhibition Henry VIII: Man and Monarch in 2009, and Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion in 2019, and is lead curator of Elizabeth & Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. She is the author of Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance (2011) and Tudor Monarchs: Lives in Letters (2017).

Karen Limper-Herz is Lead Curator of Incunabula and Sixteenth Century Printed Books at the British Library. She is co-curator of Elizabeth & Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens and also co-curated Georgians Revealed: Life, Style & the Making of Modern Britain in 2013. She is Hon. Secretary and Vice President of the Bibliographical Society of London.

Book online via this link.

Online Lecture: ‘Seeing in the Dark’, UCL via Zoom, 10th February 2022, 18:00-19:30 GMT

In this exploratory paper I consider the long history of seeing in the dark, from cave painting to Zoom lectures. Focusing especially on what was once known as the ‘Dark Ages’, I seek to counter whiggish histories of enlightenment, and explore how art and architecture are and were commonly produced and experienced in darkness or half-light. How have new technologies helped to efface histories of darkness? How, despite this, does darkness still create powerful ‘occasions’ for viewing? And to what extent does artificial light diminish modern encounters and interpretations of artworks and spaces?

Image: Detail from Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, 1617 (Wellcome Collection)

Click here to book.

Organiser:

Helena Vowles-Shorrock – History of Art 

h.vowles-shorrock@ucl.ac.uk

Speaker:

Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art and Architecture at The Courtauld Institute of Art 

More about Tom Nickson

CFP: Gothic Ivories between Luxury and Crisis, University of Bern, 27th-28th October 2022, Deadline 3rd June 2022

Despite military and pandemic crises, ivory carvings as luxury goods experienced a boom in the 13th and especially 14th centuries. This apparent contradiction raises questions about the value and significance of these objects in elite society. A large number of preserved utilitarian items such as boxes, combs, and mirror cases feature profane depictions of courtship or other imagery from contemporary romances.


Analysis of these representations offers insight into the interests of courtly owners as well as into related social structures. In this way, profane ivory carvings reflect, albeit in an idealized manner, the lives, tastes, and literary knowledge of the elite. Such objects are the focus of this conference.
The frequent contrast staged between scenes of love and war on Gothic ivories reflected certain crises faced by society: did the images on these luxury objects help members of society to cope with violent crises, or were they not perceived as related to violence at all? Did they aid individuals in dealing with the personal dilemmas posed by courtly canons of virtue? Did they reflect quandaries that arose – as propagated in minnesong – from the suffering of love? What role did their materiality play? Can we determine to what extent economic realities also came to bear on the production, execution, or decline of profane ivory carvings?

The two-day conference will be divided into four sections, focusing on historical, social, personal, and economic crises respectively.
Interested parties are asked to submit an abstract of max. 300 words (German, English, or French; with an indication of which of the four sections is desired) and a short biography by June 3, 2022. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.

Timetable:
Deadline for submission of abstracts and CV: June 3, 2022
Feedback on abstracts: June 15, 2022
Date of the conference: October 27–28, 2022
Submission of manuscripts: January 31, 2023

Contact:
Prof. Manuela Studer-Karlen (manuela.studer-karlen@unibe.ch)
University of Bern, Institute of Art History

Conference: Aural Architectures of the Divine, Online and On-Site at University of Florence, February 24th-26th 2022

online / Florence, Feb 24–26, 2022
Registration deadline: Feb 23, 2022

International and Interdisciplinary Conference [Hybrid]

Florence, 24–26 February 2022 [on site and virtually]

Research Project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo (SAGAS)

Conference Venues:
Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Università di Firenze
Sala Comparetti
Piazza Brunelleschi, 4
I-50121 Florence

Basilica di San Lorenzo
Piazza di San Lorenzo, 9
I-50123 Florence

Concept: Klaus Pietschmann and Tobias C. Weißmann (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

Conference Committee: Mila De Santis and Antonella D’Ovidio (Università degli Studi di Firenze), Klaus Pietschmann and Tobias C. Weißmann (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

An interdisciplinary conference to be held in Florence from 24 to 26 February 2022 and virtually via Zoom will focus on the complex interrelation of sacred space, sound and rites in transcultural perspectives from ancient to premodern times. The research project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” (University of Mainz) and the “Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo” (University of Florence) invite all interested researchers to participate. The conference will be held in a hybrid format – in Florence on site and virtually.

Since ancient times, religious practices and the perception of the divine have been determined by the intersection of rite, sound and sacred space. Temples, churches and other sacred buildings not only define a holy place as a physical and symbolic expression of a specific faith, but establish the setting for performative and multisensorial religious ceremonies in which music and other sonic manifestations play an important role. The structure, decoration and furnishing of sacred buildings create specific acoustics which influence the soundscape of sacred spaces. Performative rites such as services, processions, sacred plays or other liturgical ceremonies use the potentials of these environments in specific ways. Vice versa, architecture reacts to ritual and musical developments by modifying venerable sanctuaries or in designing and constructing new buildings.
The interdisciplinary conference explores the complex interrelation of sacred space, sound and rites in transcultural perspectives from ancient to premodern times. The sacred space is understood as a historical product, which was determined by a religion’s theological, aesthetic and socio-cultural context and which – conversely – shaped the performative, sonic and aesthetic dimensions of the ritual activities.
The congress is organised by the research project “CANTORIA. Music and Sacred Architecture” (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) in cooperation with the “Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo” (University of Florence). A lecture-concert in the basilica of San Lorenzo with polychoral music composed for this church and for the Florentine Cathedral in the 17th century will prove the interrelation of music, architecture and acoustics at an authentic space. A video recording of the lecture concert will be published on the “CANTORIA” project website.

Further information: 
The conference will be held in a hybrid format – in Florence and virtually. All participants on site must be vaccinated and tested. For the current Covid 19-regulations please, see the website: https://cantoria-mainz.de

Registration is required: 
anmeldung-musikwissenschaft@uni-mainz.de

Contact
Klaus Pietschmann: klaus.pietschmann@uni-mainz.de
Tobias C. Weißmann: tobias.weissmann@uni-mainz.de

Supported by
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung
Gutenberg Forschungskolleg

Programme:

Thursday, 24 February 2022

14.30: Mila De Santis | Antonella D’Ovidio (Florence): Welcome

14.45: Klaus Pietschmann | Tobias C. Weißmann (Mainz): Introduction

Keynote Lecture

15.00: Jonathan Berger (Stanford): Sound, Space and the Aesthetics of the Sublime

16.00: Coffee Break

I. Antiquity

17.00: Doris Prechel (Mainz) | Giulia Torri (Florence): Stations of the Temple Cult – Set to Music in the Hittite Culture in Central Anatolia 2nd Millenium BC

17.30: Diana Perego (Milan) | Michele Traversi Montani (Lecco): Spazio e suono nel santuario attico di Ikaria

18.00: Jutta Günther (Göttingen) | Florian Leitmeir (Würzburg): Mysterious Noises, Mysterious Space. The Soundscape of the Frieze of the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii

18:30: Break

21.00: Lecture Concert in the Basilica di San Lorenzo

21.00: Umberto Cerini (Florence): Musiche policorali negli archivi musicali di San Lorenzo e Santa Maria del Fiore. Testimonianze di una pratica diffusa

21.15: Concert by Lilium Cantores & Cappella Musicale di San Lorenzo (Musical Director: Umberto Cerini)
Polychoral Church Music from 17th Century Florence: Ruggiero Giovannelli, Marco da Gagliano, Filippo Vitali and Nicolò Sapiti

Friday, 25 February 2022

II. Middle Ages

9.00: Renzo Chiovelli (Rome) | Enrica Petrucci (Camerino) | Vania Rocchi (Florence): Lo studio delle ‘Trombe d’Eustachio’ nella cripta del Santo Sepolcro di Acquapendente come contributo al paesaggio sonoro della Via Francigena

9.30: Stefan Morent (Tübingen): Sacred Sound – Sacred Space: In Search of Lost Sound. Virtual Acoustic-Visual Reconstruction of Sacred Spaces of the Middle Ages

10.00: Anna Adashinskaya (Moscow): Singing for the Dead in Medieval Serbia. From Lateral Chapels to Additional Monastic Buildings

10.30: Coffee Break

11.30: Galliano Ciliberti (Monopoli): Reims: Spazi sacri, suoni e riti nelle incoronazioni dei re di Francia. San Luigi IX (1226) e Carlo X (1825)

III. Early Modern Period I: Italy

12.00: Vasco Zara (Dijon): The Theory of Architecture. The Renaissance Principles and their Applications

12.30: Stephanie Azzarello (Cambridge): Angels Above, Monks Below. The Use of Images, Sound, and Ritual in Venetian Sacred Spaces

13.00: Lunch Break

15:00 Emanuela Vai (Oxford): Staging Sound, Shaping Space. The Confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore in the Early Modern Venetian Terraferma

15.30: Maddalena Bonechi (Florence): Musiche negli spazi architettonici di Santa Felicita a Firenze nel primo Seicento

16.00: Umberto Cerini (Florence): Cantori, chierici, organi e strumenti. La dialettica della musica liturgica negli spazi di Santa Maria del Fiore a cavallo tra Sei e Settecento

16.30: Coffee Break

17.30 Elena Abbado (Vienna): Oratorio vs Oratorio. Considerazioni sull’evoluzione del rapporto tra spazio architettonico e genere musicale nella Firenze tra Sei e Settecento

IV. Early Modern Period II: Central and Eastern Europe

18.00: Eugeen Schreurs (Antwerp): Angelic Hymns of Praise. Rood Lofts in Brabant, Flanders and Liège

18.30: Camilla Cavicchi (Tours): The Inner Ear. Watching Painted Music in the Castle of Montreuil-Bellay

Saturday, 26 February 2022

IV. Early Modern Period II: Central and Eastern Europe (continued)

9.00: Jean-Christophe Valière (Poitiers): The Approach of the Archaeoacoustic. The Case of Montivilliers Abbatial Church

9.30: Jana Kratochvílová (Brno): The Relationship of Sacral Architecture and Musical Practise in Royal Cities in Czech Lands (1450–1700)

10.00: Nicholas Smolenski (Durham): Metaphorical Construction of St Paul’s Cathedral in John Blow’s I was glad

10.30: Coffee Break

V. Non-European Cultures

11.30: Patrick Becker-Naydenov (Vienna): From Eastern Plainchant to Qurʾān Recitation? Practical, Aesthetical, and Architectural Implications for Converting Churches into Mosques and Constructing Islamic Sacral Sites in 16th-Century Urban and Rural Ottoman Southeastern Europe

12.00: Janie Cole (Cape Town): Sacred Architecture, Jesuit Missionaries and Performance in the Christian Kingdom of Early Modern Ethiopia

12.30: Gayathri Iyer (New Delhi): She Came, She Sang, She Danced. Interactions Between South Indian Temple Architecture and the Body of the Hereditary Performer as the Foundation of the Hindu Aural Divine

13.00: Concluding Remarks and End of the Conference

Online lecture: ‘Saint-Lazare d’Autun, collégiale ducale et église de pèlerinage’, Éliane Vergnolle, 14 February 2022, 5pm (GMT) / 6pm (CET)

La célébrité du grand tympan du Jugement dernier et des magnifiques chapiteaux sculptés de Saint-Lazare d’Autun a quelque peu laissé dans l’ombre le monument lui- même. Il s’agit pourtant d’un fleuron de l’architecture romane en Bourgogne. Érigée dans l’enceinte de son château par le duc Hugues II, la collégiale consacrée en 1130 avait une double vocation : manifester le prestige de son fondateur et accueillir l’un des pèlerinages les plus importants de Bourgogne.

Si les jeux de pilastres cannelés et les ordres superposés de l’élévation intérieure s’inscrivent dans le courant antiquisant inau- guré au début du XIIe siècle à Cluny, leur traitement, notamment la riche polychromie révélée par la récente restauration, dénote un sens du décorum particulièrement affirmé. La translation des reliques de saint Lazare opérée en 1146 marqua une ultime étape du chantier avec, d’une part, la construction dans l’abside d’un imposant tombeau sculpté – détruit au XVIIIe siècle mais dont les vestiges sont conservés au musée Rolin – et, de l’autre, celle d’un somptueux porche d’entrée destiné à l’accueil des pèlerins.

Visio-conférence GRATUITE sur inscription obligatoire.

Inscription par courriel à l’adresse frederique@sfa-monuments.fr ou sur le portail HELLO ASSO (cliquez ICI)

Renseignements auprès de la Société française d’archéologie par téléphone au 0033 (0)1 42 73 08 07
ou ici.

Online Lecture: East of Byzantium Lecture – Syriac Villages in the Tur Abdin: A Microhistory of the Medieval Middle East, 15th February 2022 12:00-13:30pm (EST)

While scholarly work on the churches of the Tur Abdin dates back to the work of Gertrude Bell, and subsequently continued off and on through the twentieth century, the focus of most research has consistently been the churches in the region. However, churches are the heart of communities, whether villages or monasteries, and need to be considered as part of the whole. What has not been considered in detail is the importance of contextualizing churches in the villages and cities in the region, both in terms of the material remains and the literary sources. This paper is meant to start a discussion about the significance of colonialism in the study of this region, the importance of microhistory in understanding archaeological material, and the overall underdiscussed material present in the Tur Abdin.

Marica Cassis specializes in the Late Roman, Byzantine, and Syriac past in Anatolia, and did her PhD in Byzantine and Syriac studies at the University of Toronto in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. Since then she has worked at SUNY Cortland, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and is now the Head of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary.

Her work currently focuses on two areas. First, she is the director of the SSHRC funded Byzantine excavations at Çadır Höyük, a multi-period site in Yozgat province Turkey. Work at the site is following the evolution of a small agricultural and defensive site in Anatolia from the Roman period through to the arrival of the Seljuk Turks. It is one of the few sites in Anatolia that is able to follow the continuous occupation of sites in the rural late Roman and Byzantine hinterland. She also works on the intersection of colonialism, orientalism, and gender theory with Byzantine and Syriac archaeology, considering new ways of reconsidering the material to provide a more nuanced view of the past.

This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link. Please register to receive the Zoom link. REGISTER FOR THE LECTURE

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.